Agile beyond Buzzword: our summary after a year of agile organization ...

Off to the next round ... the "Go Live" & first Summit

As described in episode 1 of our logbook, at the end of 2017 we decided to implement an agile steering model and linked it to an OKR logic. Until then everything sounded logical - just like theory. The true complexity only became apparent during the implementation phase.

We ceremoniously kicked off the "Go Live" with a festival-like event, the so-called Practice Summit, in March 2018.

The coordination of the initial set-up and the sharpening of the overall story for our Practice took about two months after the initial development of our Company ReBuilding umbrella story. Now it was up to the (company-wide) public. As just mentioned, the Practice Summit was the starting signal, to which our organization was openly invited. This means that anyone who was interested in working with us - whether consultants or service employees - could take part.

As location we chose the workshop area of our cooperation partner Orange Council, where the artist team "Freeters" creates innovation tools and working worlds. The original concern that "we will end up sitting with 20 people" in the hall has fortunately not come true: about 80 people from different backgrounds were present. After an initial Mindfulness Exercise by Mike Kaiser there was a short presentation of our Company ReBuilding story (... too short, as it turned out later...), which was to serve as the foundation for the development of the Community of Practice (CoP) Stories and formed the framework for the entire Practice.

Subsequently, both the common practice values and principles were formulated, discussed and adopted in group exercises. A very important step for our practice (... we still have to work on compliance today ... but more on this in one of the next episodes). Last but not least, the agile steering logic was presented and the first iteration was planned in teams that formed around the respective product owner in marketplaces. The first planning cycle was scheduled according to the standard period of three months and was to be concluded with a full-day retrospective in June. The day was - not least because of the the excellent environment and intensive preparation as well as the moderation by the master of ceremonies and the organizing team - a complete success. Felt like the start of a movement. An incredibly motivated team, energetically charged and ready to push the Company ReBuilding story into the market.

So we thought at least ... the initial task for all CoPs in the first iteration was to do basic homework towards "building up the respective know-how and alignment with the overall story". Consequently, we deliberately started in CoP silos.

This was stored accordingly in the OKR Excel file in the form of work items. In addition, a first committee structure was proposed by the masters of ceremonies and adopted by the whole circle. And since "Eat your own dogfood" is one of our principles, we also wanted to set up “admin roles & committees” as possible. This was in the first iteration: every two weeks a Practice Council meeting of two hours and every two weeks a 30-minute Practice Call in which the product owners could present the respective status.

“Going-live” ... first setbacks, but also successes ...

And here we go! But how exactly? After the first two weeks had passed with a good feeling, the tool selection got a high degree of urgency. The self-made Excel-Sharepoint solution not only looked modest, but also took on a complexity that was no longer manageable due to the various activities, status changes, etc. The Excel-Sharepoint solution was not only a simple solution, but also a very complex one. In addition, shadow tool structures were formed in the various CoPs: from Trello and Slack to Google Doc implementations, there were no limits to the imagination ... as a result, the agile steering logic increasingly lost power. In addition to the work items agreed at the Practice Summit, which ultimately represented a 100% utilization of resources for iteration, various side and shadow activities arose. At the beginning of May, Workboard was finally introduced as a tool for all CoPs and thus all tasks could be transferred to the tool and assigned to the respective OKRs. Sounds simple - but it wasn't. Because the motivation to transfer all structures and items created with great effort in Trello & Co was very limited in the first iteration. Therefore we decided to save this for the second iteration and to see the first iteration as a "test run".

In addition, it turned out that the discussion on linking OKRs and the agile model was not yet methodologically deep - clear omission from us in the Practice Council. Where do the work items specifically belong to the OKRs? Are there OKRs only at practice level or also at CoP level? Who is specifically responsible for what? - all this had been discussed and thought through at the beginning but not at the end.

Although work was definitely more focused in the CoPs and closer to concrete customer challenges, the organisation - to be more precise, the most motivated high performers - was moving in the direction of a "collective burnout". Although the practice grew continuously (from 20 to currently approx. 130 people), the workload seemed to be distributed among the same people. The main burden of practice development lay with a narrow circle of perhaps 25 people - the remaining members were more like followers. An important distinction, by the way, because success ultimately needs both.

In addition to the challenges posed by the late introduction of the Workboard tool and the link between the agile model and the OKRs, there were other challenges in the direction of the pilot and crew. The "ad-hoc" backlog idea was (or is) totally meaningful - however, our pilot was withdrawn to nirvana full-time due to a critical project, so that the roles pilot with crew did not really took off. First field tests turned out to be too little structured and value-generating - definitely an optimization topic for the next iteration.

The honest interim conclusion was given in the second summit - the first retrospective on July 7, 2018.

We had collected feedback from the entire community in order to present and discuss it in the first retrospective and to jointly derive measures for the second iteration. More about this later. The discussion about the preparation of the OKRs and the assignment of work items for the next iteration showed the still immature elements of our steering logic as well as the method discussion. At the very last minute and thanks to the heroic efforts of our master of ceremonies Andreas Heiszenberger, at the summer party of the Detecon on the eve of the event the last method discussions were concluded in a pragmatic way and the workboard was filled with a meaningful OKR and work item structure for the second iteration.

The first retrospective took place in the former canteen area of our headquarters, which we had transformed into an agile New Work area thanks to Orange Council. In a proven professional manner, the moderation was taken over by our ceremony masters. The initial task was to determine the status of the work items of the first iteration by the product owners or to have their acceptance confirmed. And here we made a next mistake: with the intention to keep the overall motivation of the group high, the product owners checked almost all work items as “done". And that, apparently, various acceptance criteria were not met - to the current disadvantage of the entire community. We will definitely change this in the next retrospective. This was followed by a presentation and discussion of the feedback from the community on the first iteration. The main feedbacks were: "I would like to work more in the practice ... but don't have enough time", "We have achieved a lot towards the customer", "The umbrella story is well received by the market", but also: "The agile management model is not yet sufficiently mature or has been insufficiently explained", "The umbrella story has not yet been sufficiently understood" (which also makes alignment with the CoP topics difficult), "The workload has increased rather than decreased", "The tool introduction came too late". So there is a lot to do for the next iteration. The final step was the planning of the key results for the next iteration as well as the corresponding work items. Overall the feedback was very positive again - but with a lot of homework for the next iteration - which we are currently in...

An interim conclusion ... or what we have learned so far...

"Agil isn't as easy as it sounds," a fitting statement from a member of our community. The parallel introduction of OKRs and an agile management model is a big organizational challenge. We don't want to make the mistake of starting too fast and methodically immature at the beginning. In particular, patience should be brought along and one should not approach the topic with false expectations - the positive effects, which we have wished for almost from the very beginning, only now, after four months slowly but surely, will occur. Another essential learning is that self-organization reaches its limits, because in the end one still has to make a clear decision in order not to be left in endless theoretical discussions.

And we had developed into such a round as the Practice Council. So for the second iteration we reduced the number of members from eight to four. As soon as our steering model is stable, we plan to rotate one position at a time in order to bring in a breath of fresh air. The role of the Master of Ceremonies has proven to be very successful for us - without them we would never have been able to get our practice up and running so quickly. We have taken another insight with us: It is extremely relieving to know - we don't need a perfect organisational solution, we can make adjustments again in three months.

That we took the feedback of the first retrospective very seriously …

We are also interested in your (implementation) experience around the topics agility and OKRs: What went well with your implementation? What did you have to adapt afterwards?

We are looking forward to your feedback and experiences! Many thanks for sharing!

About the authors

Marc Wagner is a member of the Detecon management team. As a member of the Practice Council he is responsible for the Practice #Company ReBuilding and accompanies companies in the digital transformation around the topics of digital ecosystems, innovation and sustainable work organizations. He was previously responsible for various management functions, including restructuring, financial management, CHRO advisory and people management, and started his career as the founder of an IT start-up. Marc Wagner is the editor of various studies and publications on New Work and innovation culture as well as co-author of the book "New Work - on the way to a new world of work".

Verena Vinke is a management consultant and member of the Practice Council of the Functional Practice New Work, Ecosystems & Company Rebuilding. Her focus is on the cultural accompaniment of companies during digital transformation. Most recently, she was involved in various project management roles in the context of New Work.

Below again: many thanks to our masters of ceremonies Sabrina, Luisa, Markus and Andy as well as our masters of the governance model Philipp and Michael and Practice Council members Karla and Lars for your input and support.

And of course many thanks to all Practice Members who made this success possible ...

#CompanyReBuilding # OKR #NewWork #Strategy #Innovation